Material

100% Sustainable renewable birch plywood

Klevr items are made from birch plywood, a very dense plywood that is made from thin birch veneers laminated together under strict quality control. The material is very strong and dimensionally stable, meaning that it shouldn't warp or bow over time, and it has a beautiful edge with alternating veneer colors and no voids or holes along the edges.

We use birch plywood from several sources... Our smaller items for home use are made with Finnish birch plywood that is coated on both sides with a transparent melamine film that provides a moisture barrier (closed-pore finish) and a smooth hard-wearing working surface. Our larger items for commercial settings are made with domestically manufactured birch plywood with a UV finish applied at the factory.

We leave the edges bare, but unlike particle board and MDF which will absorb moisture like a sponge, birch plywood is very stable and relatively unaffected by moisture in an indoor environment (even the occasional juice box of coffee spill won't weaken it). You can certainly wipe the edges with an oil-based or acrylic-based finish to protect and seal them from gathering oils and dirt with age, but leaving them bare is perfectly fine. The integrity of the material will not change - it will be just as strong in ten years as it is on day one.

Real wood with real natural variations

Because Klevr products are made with natural wood materials, the wood grain and appearance may and usually will vary from panel to panel. And occasionally, a panel may contain some natural discolorations and patches in the surface veneers.

Natural discolorations typically come from environmental factors where the trees grow and while they can produce some very beautiful patterns in the wood, they can cause mismatched panels in an assembled product. Patches that may be present in the veneer are inserted into the veneer at the plywood factory to replace knots that naturally occur in the wood. These patches are purely cosmetic and while they are typically color matched to the surrounding veneer, the pattern of the wood grain and any natural discolorations in the wood may cause the patches to be more visible on some panels than on others.

For these reasons, we grade the plywood sheets and try to use the best sheets for the most visible panels, allowing any patches and discolorations to fall on inner panels that either cannot be seen or often will not be seen. This material selection is the compromise we make to produce an affordable product that is strong and durable and that can last a lifetime.

Before you assemble your new Klevr furniture, take a moment to examine the panel faces to find the prettiest side of each panel (the sides with the wood grain you’d like to see most often and that have the fewest, if any, cosmetic blemishes). When you assemble your item, you will want to orient these panels so that the prettiest sides face outwards.

Care and maintenance of your items

Our Finnish birch plywood has a durable surface film that is applied at the factory under stringent manufacturing standards. This surface film can withstand regular daily use for many years and requires very little care. Usually a damp rag is all that’s required to remove dirt and debris from the surface, but it’s perfectly safe to use a soap and water solution to clean it. Please avoid using ammonia, solvents and other off-the-shelf general purpose cleansers because the variety of chemicals being used in today's cleansers makes it nearly impossible for us to predict what harmful effects they could have on the surface film.